Australian federal police have raided the Sydney home of Craig Steven Wright, the man who-just a few hours ago-was named by Wired and Gizmodo as the probable creator of Bitcoin.
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The Guardian reports that the home in Sydney was raided on Wednesday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. 10 personnel from the Australian Federal Police force arrived at Wright’s home.
Technology publications Wired and Gizmodo published reports this week identifying an Australian businessman as bitcoin’s likely inventor.
Laying out an array of documents that included leaked emails, legal transcripts and deleted blog and social-media posts from Wright, Wired’s ultimate conclusion was that “despite a massive trove of evidence, we still can’t say with absolute certainty that the mystery is solved”.
The article will be updated later today. Wired pointed out that several emails were edited after they were sent to insert information implying that Wright developed the crypto-currency.
And there’s more. Wired also obtained an exchange between Wright and his late friend David Kleiman, a computer forensics analyst, in which Kleiman agrees to take control of the “Tulip Trust”, a stash of 1.1 million bitcoins.
The search warrant for Wright’s home was issued at the request of the Australian Taxation Office, according to Australia’s ABC News.
The identity of the creator of bitcoin has never been revealed but it ever is, its creator could be lauded as one of the greatest computer scientific minds of our time. There’s also a transcript between Wright and his lawyers that appears to involve the same tax dispute.
Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old man who lived in Japan, but his ideal use of English and no Japanese documentation for the bitcoin protocol made people suspicious.
“The body of evidence presented is certainly compelling, and fills in numerous holes not covered by other supposed outings of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, who is fast becoming something of a Lord Lucan for the digital world”.
A third email published by Gizmodo from 2008 attributes to Wright a comment where he said: “I have been working on a new form of electronic money”.
Documents from the administrator, published on its website, show Hotwire was established in June 2013 to “undertake research and development on e-learning systems and e-payment systems”, and that it acquired its software through a range of “complex Bitcoin related” transactions.
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The Gizmodo story includes interviews with Wright’s ex-wife, and reporters who tried to interview those close to him in Australia, but were mostly stonewalled.
